1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of animal training. More particularly, the invention pertains to training animals to remain in or avoid a selected area using wireless alarm devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Over 30 million homes in the United States have house pets such as cats, dogs, rabbits or ferrets which are permitted access to some or all of the house. Worldwide, that number is in the hundreds of millions. A typical problem with having a house pet live in your home is that there are certain areas of the home the owner does not want the animal to enter. The area may be a danger to the pet or the pet may not be fully trained and can soil an expensive rug or couch. A further reason may be that the pet can inadvertently damage a display or piece of furniture.
The simplest way to keep a pet out of an area of the house is to close a door or put up physical barricade that will restrain the pet from entering or leaving a certain area. In a conventional house layout with physically divided rooms, this approach could solve some portion of the problem. However, in a house with an “open landscape” interior architecture, where one room flows into another with few dividing walls, this approach does not work well.
There are devices on the market that use a motion sensor to detect the presence of the pet and then sound an ultrasonic alarm. This makes the pet uncomfortable and could make it leave the area. A drawback to this approach is the pet needs to come into the vicinity of the device to be detected. Also, differentiating human motion from animal motion is difficult and the ultrasonic alarm can be on for an extended amount of time, so that the pet becomes accustomed to the sound, making the pet think that the sound is part of its environment rather than a warning. This prevents any learning about acceptable areas and unacceptable areas where the pet can venture.
Another device on the market to solve this problem is to have the pet wear a transmitter that gets detected by a stationary receiver. Whenever the transmitter gets in the vicinity of the receiver, indicating the pet is approaching a forbidden area, an ultrasonic noise is emitted or the pet gets electric shocks through its collar in differing implementation. A problem with these approaches is that the ultrasonic noise must be loud enough to prevent the pet from entering and the receiver is always a distance away from the pet. Using the shock treatment can be considered cruel to the pet, but if the shock is not strong enough to be a deterrent than it could be totally ineffectual. Another problem is that the transmitter in the pet's collar must be transmitting at all times and requires power from rechargeable or expendable batteries. If the batteries are not changed or recharged often, the device will not reinforce the pet's behavior and could become useless. A further problem with all of these devices is that there is no differentiation between pets in a multi-pet household. As an example, an older pet may be allowed in certain areas, but a puppy should be excluded, or the cat is allowed in rooms forbidden to the rabbit and vice-versa.
The Invisible Fence® system made by Invisible Fence, Inc., of Knoxville, Tenn., effectively is the reverse of this last system—the area within which a pet is to be confined is surrounded by a wire which continuously transmits a signal, and the pet (usually a dog) wears a receiver which picks up the signal from the wire. The pet is warned, as described above, when the receiver detects that it has approached the wire too closely. This system has the same drawbacks of the systems which have the pet carrying a transmitter, as well as requiring the entire area to be surrounded by the “fence” wire. In the typical outdoor installation, the wire can be buried, but it could be problematic to conceal the wire within a home.